We know the average American physician interrupts their patient in 14 seconds. — Abraham Verghese Copy Share Image
The bottom line: health care reform is about the patient, not about the physician. — Abraham Verghese Copy Share Image
“I don't think you can be a physician and not see yourself reflected in your patient's illness. How would I deal with… — Abraham Verghese Copy Share Image
I always wondered if the good people who send us bibles really think that hookworm and hunger are healed by scripture? Our… — Abraham Verghese Copy Share Image
“Patience be damned. Let them suffer their distorted worldview. Your job is to preserve yourself, not to descend into their hole.” — Abraham Verghese Copy Share Image
By visiting patients in their home, by helping them come to terms with their illness, I could heal when I could not… — Abraham Verghese Copy Share Image
There's something universal about illness... Whether you like it, at some level all patients are saying, 'Daddy, Mommy, help me, tell me… — Abraham Verghese Copy Share Image
“When we cannot cure or save a life, our patients can at least feel cared for. It should be a basic human… — Abraham Verghese Copy Share Image
My VIP patients often regret so many things on their deathbeds. They regret the bitterness they'll leave in people's hearts. They realize… — Abraham Verghese Copy Share Image
We have the sense that medical students come to medicine with a great capacity to understand the suffering of patients. And then… — Abraham Verghese Copy Share Image
My deceased patients have taught me over the years to believe in the glass half full, to make good use of the… — Abraham Verghese Copy Share Image
Lets take away the incentives to do 'to' patients and instead create incentives to do 'for' patients, to be 'with' patients. We… — Abraham Verghese Copy Share Image
As a young physician in the mid-'80s, caring for people who had contracted H.I.V., I lost two of my patients to suicide… — Abraham Verghese Copy Share Image
“Being the firstborn gives you great patience. But you reach a point where after trying and trying you say, Patience be damned.… — Abraham Verghese Copy Share Image
I still find the best way to understand a hospitalized patient whose care I am taking over is not by staring at… — Abraham Verghese Copy Share Image
I still find the best way to understand a hospitalized patient is not by staring at the computer screen but by going… — Abraham Verghese Copy Share Image
“We stopped you from going, didn't we? Me and Shiva. Our birth?" Don't be silly. Can you imagine me giving up this?"… — Abraham Verghese Copy Share Image
“It was a sad fact that the commonest complaint in the outpatient department was “Rasehn . . . libehn . . .… — Abraham Verghese Copy Share Image
I've never bought this idea of taking a therapeutic distance. If I see a student or house staff cry, I take great faith in… — Abraham Verghese Copy Share
I love to read poetry but I haven't written anything that I'm willing to show anybody. — Abraham Verghese Copy Share
We come unbidden into this life, and if we are lucky we find a purpose beyond starvation, misery, and early death which, lest we… — Abraham Verghese Copy Share
I think America is really in denial about the degree to which residents, particularly foreign medical graduates, man the county hospitals of this country,… — Abraham Verghese Copy Share
“Do they listen?" He held up a finger. "Every year one does," he said, ginning, "But that one makes it worthwhile. Even Jesus only… — Abraham Verghese Copy Share
“It seems we humans never learn. And so we relearn the lesson every generation and then want to write epistles. We proselytize to our… — Abraham Verghese Copy Share
It was all I had, all I've ever had, the only currency, the only proof that I was alive. Memory. — Abraham Verghese Copy Share
“There it was, Hema must have thought; it was both the sorry and the thank-you that was so long overdue, and the funny thing… — Abraham Verghese Copy Share
“This is my life, I thought, as my taxi slogged through heavy traffic and inched through the tunnel to Logan Airport. I have excised… — Abraham Verghese Copy Share
“I could see that the almost mystical aura of this legendary surgeon -- the single-mindedness, the dedication, the skill -- was mere surface. The… — Abraham Verghese Copy Share
“As a child I'd longed for Thomas Stone or at least the idea of him. So many mornings I waited for him at the… — Abraham Verghese Copy Share
“The reader, knowing nothing about the ‘dark continent,’ filled in the blanks. Pictured Stone in a tent, kerosene lamp held up by a Hottentot… — Abraham Verghese Copy Share
“This was what growing up was about: hide the corpse, don't bare your heart, do make assumptions about the motives of others. They're certainly… — Abraham Verghese Copy Share
“And as for my father? No, he wouldn't ever walk through those gates; I now knew that. Whatever Thomas Stone had, wherever he was… — Abraham Verghese Copy Share
“... telling herself stories about herself in a singsong voice, creating her own mythology.” — Abraham Verghese Copy Share
